Improve Query Performance when SQL Server Ignores Nonclustered Index
In this article, we look at why SQL Server may not use a non-clustered index over the clustered index and what you can do to improve performance.
2023-10-30
Additional Articles
Mastering a cloud migration: 10 video tips
If you haven’t had time to catch up on our latest full-length webinar on Cloud Migration, here’s an easy way to digest the tips from our experts in less than 20 minutes!
2023-10-30
First Normal Form Gets No Respect
Dr. Codd first described the relational model in a paper in Communications of the ACM (CACM 13 No 6; June 1970). Some more work followed up after that by other people, giving us normal forms and other things we have taken for granted for 50+ years.
2023-10-27
Power Query Editor in Power BI for Formatting Text Columns
This article looks at ways to clean up text data used in Power BI reports and charts for a more meaningful and consistent message.
2023-10-27
How We Ate Our Own Dog Food To Level-Up Internal Testing with Redgate Clone
Most applications have large and complex databases at the back end, making it hard for developers to adequately test their work before it goes out. Having a fast, repeatable process to deliver data on demand is an essential part of an effective software development lifecycle, ultimately leading to improved customer satisfaction. In this article, we’ll explore the journey our own engineering team went on to leverage our own tool, Redgate Clone, to spin up short-lived database instances in containers for automated testing.
2023-10-25
Top 10 Methods to Improve ETL Performance Using SSIS
Extraction Transformation Load (ETL) is the backbone for any data warehouse. In the data warehouse world data is managed by the ETL process, which consists of three processes, Extraction-Pull/Acquire data from sources, Transformation-change data in the required format and Load-push data to the destination generally into a data warehouse or a data mart.
2023-10-25
The promise – and the perils – of GitHub Copilot
There’s been a lot of talk about GitHub Copilot recently, loudly touted as Your AI pair programmer. According to GitHub, Copilot for Business brings the power of generative AI to engineering teams, accelerating the speed of software development and innovation.
2023-10-23
Understanding Locking, Data Modification and Committing Data in SQL Server
Learn about how SQL Server uses locks when modifying data and how data is committed to a database after data changes.
2023-10-23
Azure Databricks Tables - Delta Lake, Hive Metastore, TempViews, Managed, External
Learn about the different tables that can be created using Azure Databricks with a dive deep into the importance of Delta Lake tables.
2023-10-20
Query processing architecture guide
The SQL Server Database Engine processes queries on various data storage architectures such as local tables, partitioned tables, and tables distributed across multiple servers. The following sections cover how SQL Server processes queries and optimizes query reuse through execution plan caching.
2023-10-20
Blogs
RANK() vs DENSE_RANK(): #SQLNewBlogger
By Steve Jones
I haven’t done one of these in awhile, but I saw an article recently...
Using CAT for Testing of Data Agents
In last months one of the scenarios where you can use AI has been...
Forums
What Scanning Hundreds of SQL Servers Taught Me About the Defaults We All
I have been reading SQLServerCentral for about 15 years and somehow never posted. This...
Missing the Jaro Winkler Distance
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Missing the Jaro Winkler Distance
25 Years Later: What SQLServerCentral Meant to Me
Comments posted to this topic are about the item 25 Years Later: What SQLServerCentral...
Question of the Day
Missing the Jaro Winkler Distance
I upgraded a SQL Server 2019 instance to SQL Server 2025. I wanted to test the fuzzy string search functions. I run this code:
SELECT JARO_WINKLER_DISTANCE('tim', 'tom')
I get this error message:Msg 195, Level 15, State 10, Line 1 'JARO_WINKLER_DISTANCE' is not a recognized built-in function name.What is wrong? See possible answers